New Wooden Kit Available from Shipyard: HMS Rattlesnake 1777

[ccoyle]

I just learned today that Shipyard has released a new offering in their series of wooden kits (it's so new, in fact, that it's not yet even available for purchase in Shipyard's online shop). The new kit is the English revenue cutter Rattlesnake 1777 (the kit says '1776', but I think they got the date wrong). Shipyard have been highly regarded for years for their card model design, but they are relative newcomers to the world of wooden kits. Despite the fact that these kits are constructed of wood, they are designed -- and built -- in much the same manner as one of Shipyard's card kits, using plywood veneers instead of wood planking strips. That makes this type of kit a kind of 'wooden card model', if such a term makes sense. If you want to see what this looks like in actual practice, you can check out my build of Shipyard's Wütender Hund here and gallery images here.

 

The prototype model is quite striking. If you're thinking that it looks rather like HM Cutter Alert 1777, that's because I believe the two ships were in the same class. There are, of course, several very nice kits of Alert already on the market, but this kit gives modelers an option to build something in a manner a little different from the usual POB wooden kits we see. As is usually the case, high quality comes at a cost; in this case, the Shipyard kit will set you back 1546 PLN, or about US$394.11 at today's exchange rate. That'd be eye-watering for a card model, but this is a wooden model -- with all wooden parts laser-cut.

 

I hope we'll see more wooden kit offerings from Shipyard in the not-too-distant future!

[AnobiumPunctatum]

Thanks for sharing the inforamtion. If I have a look at the price, I am really shocked. The Vanguard Alert in the bigger scale is a lot cheaper than the small 1/72 kit.

I could not find an information which kind of timber shipyard use for the kit. I hope it is a better wood than in their cog kits.

[ccoyle]

34 minutes ago, AnobiumPunctatum said:

Thanks for sharing the inforamtion. If I have a look at the price, I am really shocked. The Vanguard Alert in the bigger scale is a lot cheaper than the small 1/72 kit.

I could not find an information which kind of timber shipyard use for the kit. I hope it is a better wood than in their cog kits.

 

Yes, it is not cheap, but the construction method is different. Vanguard kits have a lot of laser-cut parts, but in the Shipyard kits, everything is laser-cut. As a result, there is almost no sanding to be done, other than smoothing the spots that hold parts in their frets. This also means there is no plank spiling to do. This makes Shipyard kits appealing to modelers who may not be able to deal with wood dust for whatever reason. So it's not really a direct competitor to Vanguard in the sense of being a choice between two POB kits -- it's more of a choice between two similar but substantially different construction methods.